With its strong belief in a united Southasia, Himal is always eager to join discussions exploring aspects of this entity. Featured here are a series of articles from The South Asian Idea blog on modernity and Southasia.
Send us your thoughts below!
Is There Such a Thing as a Modern South Asian?
We have been struggling to understand the nature of modernity in South Asia and in one of the posts on the topic (How Modern is Modern?) had left off with the following observation from a reader: "Even the small segment one might call modern has never experienced anything like the Enlightenment directly so that culturally we have remained pre-modern even in the most modern sectors."
This prompted us to look up the literature on the Enlightenment in greater detail and our search could well leave us with the conclusion that there is really no such thing as a modern South Asian. We will follow up this heretical thread later in this post but let us first introduce an exceptionally illuminating book on the subject of the Enlightenment.